“No, not that,” he said as he shook his head. “A man’s heart is more complicated than that. After seeing Madam de Bonnivet to her carriage, for she had the audacity, or if you prefer it, the precaution, to come to the rendezvous in her private carriage, I told her in English the astonishing phrase Lord Herbert Bohun used to Madam Éthorel when he had the audacity to make a declaration to her on his second visit, and which is the finest example of insolence and fatuity I know! 'You know I shan’t give you another chance.’ I raised my hat too tranquilly for the fool to think I was sincere. But I was. I lit a cigar, reaching the Boulevard on foot with a quickness which surprised even myself. I made the discovery that not only I did not love this woman, but that she really displeased me. With her a visit to my bachelor’s apartments, the usual theatre of my pleasures, would have been a sport which flattered my vanity without a doubt, but still an unpleasant job. She is, then, quaint and pretentious. Then the image of the other one came into my mind, and this infidelity which I had almost committed against her made her seem adorable by comparison, so adorable that I at once went into a café to write to my pretty Camille a letter of reconciliation. I would have given my author’s fees for that evening for Queen Anne to have seen me, for without a doubt she believed I was in some corner shedding the tears of wounded love and humiliated vanity. That would be like me, would it not?”
“Did Mademoiselle Favier answer your note?” I asked.
“A six-page letter which is a masterpiece, just like everything she writes to me—five and a half pages to tell me she would never forgive me, and the last half-page to forgive me. It is a classic! But where are you going? I believe you were going to see her.”
“I repeat that I was looking for you,” I replied. “I have found you, but what I had to tell you you have found out. You are doing her justice and have done so to the other one. Your lover’s quarrel is over. You are reconciled and happy. There is nothing left for me to do but bless you.”
CHAPTER V
I left Jacques after this jesting remark which I laughed at him with a gaiety sufficiently well simulated for the strange pain I was stifling to escape his irony. Here was my cowardice again, my grievous inconsequence of heart which was always the same in spite of experience, in spite of resolution, and in spite of age! I had run after my friend all the afternoon to beg him not to slight his poor friend by abandoning her so brutally. I had come to the theatre to exhort Camille not to judge her lover as she did, for her possible vengeance had moved me with anxiety to the depths of my soul. I ought then to rejoice at their reconciliation. So much the better if Madam de Bonnivet’s coquetry had produced naturally a result which without doubt my counsel would not. But it was not so. The fact of the actress pardoning with the facility of a true lover wounded me in a still unsuspected place, and the thought of their appointment on the morrow was more painful still. I could see them in each other’s arms, with the help of that terribly precise imagination which a painter’s craft develops in him. This unsupportable vision made me admit the sad truth. I was jealous, jealous without hope, and the right to be so, with a childish, grotesque and unacceptable jealousy. I was about to enter, I had entered into that hell of false sentiments in which one feels the worst of passion’s sorrow without tasting any of its joys. How well I knew that cursed path!
In the course of my love affairs, which were as incomplete and incoherent as the rest of my existence, I had already experienced this dangerous situation more than once. I had been the too tender friend of a woman who was in love with some one else, but never with the sudden emotion, with the troubled ardour in the sympathy which Camille Favier inspired in me. I was afraid, so I concluded a solemn compact with myself. I took my hand and said aloud: “I give my word of honour to myself I will keep my door shut all the week, and I will neither go to see Jacques, nor to the theatre, nor to the Rue de la Barouillére. I will work and cure myself.”
Every one in his character has strong points which correspond to his weak ones. The latter are the ransom of the former. My task of energy in positive action is compensated by a rare power of passive energy, if that expression is allowable. Incapable of going forward vigorously, even when my keenest desire urges me on, I am capable of singular endurance in abstention, in abnegation and absence. Telling a woman that I love her stifles me with timidity into thinking that I shall die of it. I have been able to fly with savage energy from mistresses I have passionately adored, and remain even without answering their letters, though in agonies of grief, because I had sworn never to see them again. To keep my oath as regards Camille was much easier. In fact the week I deemed sufficient for my cure passed without my giving to her or to Jacques any sign of my existence. Neither did the two lovers give me any sign of their existence.
The first part of the programme was completed, but not the second, for the cure did not come. I must say that my wisdom in my actions was not accompanied by equal wisdom in my thoughts. I worked hard, but at what! I tried at first for forty eight hours to resume my “Psyché pardonnée.” I could not become absorbed in it. The smile and the eyes of my friend’s mistress ceaselessly interposed between my picture and myself. I put down my brush. I told Malvina Ducras, my stupid model with a common voice and such sad eyes, to take a little rest, and while the girl smoked cigarettes and read a bad novel, my mind went far away from my studio and I could see Camille again. I had read too many books, as my custom was, about this fable of Psyché for it not to make me dream. The idea represented by this story, this cruel affirmation that the soul can only love in unconsciousness, has always appeared to me to be a theme of inexpressible melancholy. Alas! it is not for matters of love only that the Psyché imprisoned and palpitating in each of us submits to this law of ignorant and obscure instinct. This stern law dominates matters of religion and matters of art. To believe is to renounce understanding. To create is to renounce reflection.